


Waves from Eternity

by ExtraPenguin



Category: Call the Ships to Port - Covenant (Song), Original Work
Genre: Gen, Hard Science Fiction, Poetry, Science Fiction, poetic prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 11:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10683924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraPenguin/pseuds/ExtraPenguin
Summary: Twenty-five thousand years ago, Earth sent a space ship and crew to study the center of the galaxy.





	Waves from Eternity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Irusu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irusu/gifts).



> [Covenant - Call the Ships to Port](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNAAkgaSgk)

_Terra Cognita: forgive me!_  
_I leave thee for fifty millennia and more._  
_I would like to stay, but the ramjet calls._  
_Thy ground I have trod on,_  
_Thy skies I have breathed of,_  
_Thy waters I have bathed in,_  
_O cradle of life._  
_But all children outgrow their cradles._  
_Terra Cognita: thou art known._  
_Thou hast taught me much,_  
_But the Universe whispers._  
_Thou, with thy mountains of history_  
_hast taught me:_  
_Hesitate not._  
_I do not hesitate._

 

For human eyes, the Universe appeared empty.

Stay still for long enough, measure for enough time, and the cosmos would slowly glow, even in the visual wavelengths. With other instrumentation, it was full of whispers. There, on the edge of the Universe, at the dawn of time, two black holes merged, the gravitational scream diminished into an echo of greatness by the inverse square law.

Here, at the center of the Milky Way, the Sagittarius A* black hole raved and raged in all the frequencies known to existence. The small ship, halfway through its journey, finally at its reason for being, performed the moves it had practiced for five or twenty-five thousand years, depending on one’s frame of reference. Time dilation meant that the _Eternal Blaze_ had but few moments subjective to absorb, observe, learn during its slingshot gravity assist.

The small ship stood on the shoulders of giants.

 

 _A whisper in the dark_  
_A voice in the maelstrom_  
_A whisper in the dark_

 

A single ion of deuterium sat in the interstellar medium. Its kinetic energy was on the low side for interstellar medium – only a few thousand kelvin – and it was not going anywhere in particular when it felt the tug of a magnetic field associated with no star. It was pulled in, in, in, by successively stronger field lines, towards the fast-moving object, its drive-flame pointing in its direction of travel, attempting to decelerate from its near-light speeds. The ion felt the repulsion of others of its kind, but the magnetic fields squeezed them ever tighter, until it collided with a lone proton. As a result of the union, a positron and a neutrino were ejected. The positron annihilated itself with an electron formed by the vacuum foam, leaving the electron’s original positron pair pairless. The neutrino continued, unaffected by material reality, oscillating from one flavor to the next, towards the edge of the Universe, never to reach it. The formed helium nucleus collided with another, producing helium-4 and two protons for the cycle to continue.

The released energy of each step was directed forth to slow down the space ship.

 

 _Oh my child, my darling child,_  
_Would you wish to be brave?_  
_Wish to leave your mother’s side_  
_Have all singing your name?_

 _Do not do as sailors did,_  
_Leaving us all behind._  
_Let me see your children’s crib_  
_Let me be there for life._

 

Occasionally, someone on Earth would remember that their far-flung astronauts were still there. Even more occasionally, someone would send a message. Very rarely would that message survive intact through the redshift and then blueshift, after the kiloparsecs’ worth of attenuation in the interstellar medium.

The best that arrived was reduced to a staticky whisper in a language born millennia after departure.

 

 _In the furthest of ports,_  
_The thing on my thoughts:_  
_Will you come back to me?_  
_I hope while I sing,_  
_Those Bussard-drive wings_  
_Bring you back home to me._

 _Once more you sail into port_  
_Once more I get what I sought_  
_Once more you tell me,_  
_The story of them who come home again._  
_Once more in the country of dreams_  
_I can hear you tell of journeys_  
_Once more, my darlings,_  
_You will come home to me!_

 

I am the ship.

My squishy neurons, heavily augmented, are its heart. Its hull is my skin. The interstellar medium’s gentle caress. The reassuring hum of life support. The immeasurable power of the drive-flame.

All mine to command.

A single choice made me what I am. A single spark of passion – desire – _yearning_ for better, novel existence.

A thousand generations made me what I am. A mountain range of culture and knowledge and human mistakes.

If I am part machine, I may avoid some. If I am part machine, I may make utterly new mistakes, not made by anyone before me. I am old and new. I am tradition and invention. I spun the wheel of fortune and learned to navigate.

I stand on the shoulders of giants.

My brothers and sisters within me may have made some different choices, but we are all but a choir full of longing for knowledge. We voyage into the endless ocean of the unknown.

I am the ship.

 

 _Come, rejoice, mortal!_  
_Life is brief: enjoy its song._  
_As the river hits the water,_  
_Both the same and different each time,_  
_From floods to the drought-time death,_  
_Notice how calming are the moments._

 _Embrace the moment,_  
_For you and I are mortal,_  
_So much to do before inevitable death:_  
_Life is brief: enjoy its song!_  
_Do not waste your time._  
_It flows through the seconds like water._

 _Embody the water:_  
_It lives in the moment._  
_It does not waste time_  
_waffling like us mortals._  
_So long ill-spent before we learned to sing!_  
_So much to catch up with before death._

 _We all will greet death,_  
_Like downhill is the destiny of water._  
_Raindrops hit the gravestones and sing._  
_Here we have but a moment,_  
_For life is short and we mortal._  
_Spend well your time._

 _And how should you spend your time,_  
_That short amount given before death?_  
_Listen closely, young mortal._  
_When the sky blesses you with water,_  
_Stop, pause, cherish the moment,_  
_Dance in the rain and sing._

 _Life has no meaning: sing!_  
_Have you better to do with your time?_  
_Use wisely each moment,_  
_For soon you'll be claimed by death._  
_Recall, rainwater is life-water_  
_That makes us grow, mortal._

 _And, at the moment of death,_  
_I shall sing the song of time immortal,_  
_As the rainwater forgives my mortal self._

 

The interstellar medium thinned near Sol. The _Eternal Blaze_ dimmed.

 

Eventually, the ship entered the region where Sol’s gravity reigned supreme, two light-years away from the star’s comforting yellow glow. Soon, on the galactic scale, they decelerated through the Oort cloud’s thin-spread small snowballs. One light-year away, the Oort cloud thinned, leaving only occasional distant detached objects in their path. Some 150 AU – a mere speck, compared to the thousands of parsecs already traversed! – away, the solar wind hit the interstellar medium, the termination shock momentarily lighting the drive-flame with new intensity.

On Earth, the current iteration of humanity desired to meet the time travelers from the deep past.

The ship blazed through the heliopause into the heliosphere, decelerating on the Sun’s particular ejecta. The scattered disc greeted it, before it sank into the Kuiper belt proper.

Neptune and Jupiter were in appropriate position for gravity assist deceleration. The _Eternal Blaze_ flew against the direction of travel of first Neptune and then Jupiter, gifting the planets a small amount of kinetic energy, returning the debt taken on the way away. The craft used its Bussard drive in similar fashion, rigging the magnetic fields to slow down to Earth-speeds. It cautiously dipped into the edges of the atmospheres, dumping momentum as much as it dared.

The final insertion into Earth orbit was done with liquid propellant, carried in the ship, carefully conserved for either one or five thousand decades, depending on one’s frame of reference.

Earth celebrated the return of its children. The _Eternal Blaze_ sang its songs.

 

Five billion years later, Sol fused the last of its core hydrogen. It gradually doubled in size into a respectable subgiant, before then rapidly expanding into a red giant that swallowed the lifeless Earth.

 

 _Terra Cognita: I arrive!_  
_Thou art changed and the same,_  
_Fifty millennia ante._  
_Provest that we are but mayflies to thee,_  
_Whilst thou operatest in deep time._  
_I have sailed the stars_  
_To the center of the galaxy_  
_And wish to tell thee all I have seen._

**Author's Note:**

>  _In the furthest of ports/The thing on my thoughts…_ is a translation _cum_ rewrite of _En gång jag seglar i hamn_ , a traditional Swedish song. All the science presented is correct, though I did cheat a bit when I presented five billion years as a blink of an eye – the Universe has only existed for 13.86 billion years. It’s only about three times as old as the Sun (4.8 bn).


End file.
